Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Connecting Cultures[Commonwealth Lecture 2012]It was a great pleasure attending Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Commonwealth Lecture last week. I admire her as a writer and am inspired by her as a woman. Describing her presentation as a lecture does not do it justice. Her monologue was engaging to the point it felt like dialogue and like most I was hanging on her every word willfully. Providing an insight into her relationship with literature, writing, and the capacity of words to reveal truths and act as the vehicle in which we explore our shared humanity is what resonated with me the most. This shared humanity is not synonymous with the homogenization of cultures, but in the connecting of cultures. Adichie advocated for the appreciation of cultural nuances whilst simultaneously understanding that we are all human beings with the common desire of being valued. As an African woman Adichie’s indictment of colonialism as an “unjust dictatorship” acknowledged my humanity. Her repeated references to Chinua Achebe made it apparent that the ability to acknowledge and liberate through words is part of the legacy Adichie has inherited as an African realist writer. Indeed, the loss of dignity is one of the most tragic realities of the colonial experience. Realist literature definitely has the agency to not only tell the stories that need to be told, but connect cultures and celebrate the universalities of life that dignify human experience.